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New imaging techniques might revolutionize the technologies currently used to capture uranium from seawater, as researchers gain a better understanding of the way the compounds that bind the atoms interact with them.
In a collaborative effort by the Oregon Healthy and Science University and the University of Pittsburgh researchers have been able to identify the genes whose role is to trigger the onset of puberty, and manipulate them to delay puberty in female rats. They hope that the discovery will help determine exactly why causes early-onset puberty in females.
Since the first plesiosaur complete skeleton was discovered in 1824, scientists have been debating how on Earth this reptile used four flippers to swim.
It’s no secret that when it comes to condoms, the pleasure factor plays a big role – some people simply don’t want to use condoms because it diminishes their pleasure. With that in mind, researchers from Australia are now working to create condoms that feel just like bare skin… or even better! This year, over […]
Researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, looking into the effects depression has on the brain have found proof linking the disorder with abnormal brain development in preschoolers. Their study, published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry, shows how gray matter is thinner and lower in volume in the cortex, an area of the brain that plays a key role in processing emotions.
Northwestern University neuroscientists have developed a method that allows them to pinpoint communicating neurons in a living fly's brain -- effectively paving the way for mind-reading. Their mapping of specific neural connection patterns could provide insight into the computational processes that underlie the workings of the human brain.
Researchers have discovered a new material that's both transparent and electrically conductive that might make smartphones, TVs, smart windows and solar cells a lot cheaper, and maybe even more efficient.
This beauty was designed, crafted and assembled by Matt Olczyk. The custom-made clock looks like a cross between old pendulum antiques and modern, minimalist designs. All the parts were custom made in Olczyk's shop using CNC milling, laser cutting and 3D-printing. The real innovation, however, lied in the fat that all of these operations were performed by one single machine - the ZMorph Hybrid 3D printer.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a United States agency responsible for developing new technologies, mostly with military applications. They work with advanced prosthetics, holograms, robots, drones, and more robots. They’re at the cutting edge of technology, and I’d bet quite a few pints that they have groundbreaking classified projects. Now, in a new […]
A company called Windspeed Tech has for the past year or so been busy designing a novel upgrade to carriers and jets: a little bubble placed on the tail of an aircraft that offers a fantastic 360 degree view.
If you're an alien buff or just really, really bored with knowing just one species that can hold a decent conversation, this might come as a bummer. SETI has confirmed that KIC 8462852, the 1,500 light-years away star that's been all over the news as potentially having signs of an advanced alien megastructure built around it is just a regular, run of the mill, alien-free ball of atomic fire.
Scientists from the University of Ferrara, Italy collaborating with the Beijing Genomics Institute have isolated a gene that, when mutated, causes muscle tissue to become significantly weakened and damaged. Their findings, published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation, show how the gene, dubbed Popeye domain containing-1, has a role in ‘gluing’ muscles cells together.
In 2001 a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the United Kingdom was traced back to a farmer that illegally fed uncooked waste to his pigs. It left the country's agricultural industry in tatters -- over 10 million sheep and cattle were killed in an effort to contain the disease. Later that year EU legislators banned the use of human food waste (or swill) as pig feed, a decision that is now coming under a lot of fire from disgruntled livestock farmers and the scientific community.
Powerful and smart people in the tech space join hands to found a new AI lab - one focused on making AI safe and beneficial to mankind.
Archaeologists believe they have found the he tomb of sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled over the Ottoman empire from 1520 to 1566, near the fortress of Szigetvar in southern Hungary.
While the windy and overcast weather of a stormy day isn't surprising on telluric planets, it's not something most of us readily associate with stars. But it does happen -- the best evidence for this is W1906+40, a distant dwarf star recently described in a study published in the Astrophysical Journal.
From its first try, a computer can now draw handwritten characters from an unfamiliar language just as well as humans can.
You know how the old saying goes, that "diamonds are forever," and giving your significant other a piece of diamond jewelry is considered to be a declaration of eternal love? Well, scientists working at the Borexino experiment in Italy may change the saying and send enamored young men scrambling for something that's really eternal to profess their love -- electrons.
There's a new player in the EV market -- one that might give Tesla a run for its money.
If we want to limit our emissions to an acceptable limit, then all aspects of human society have to come together – environmental, social, economic, and not least, technology. With this in mind, six projects were presented at COP21, highlighted as this year’s UN Momentum for Change ICT solutions winners. These are the winning projects: Fairphone […]
The future is now - researchers at the Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland have developed a camera that can see around corners and track movements in real time.
The Internet is a wonderful and wonderfully powerful place. Just think about it, you have access to almost all of human knowledge with just a few key strokes. But having this much information at your disposal seems to actually make us rely less on what we already know.
Competition between tech giants is more fierce than ever, and Google is out for blood - literally.
There is a long-lasting debate dividing the cancer researchers community over the point at which a skin lesion is considered a melanoma. A University of California-San Francisco team led by Hunter Shain might have found the answers to settle the debate once and for all; they have found a way to tell whether a lesion is harmless or growing into a melanoma.
Researchers run a problem on a quantum machine and found it performed 100 million times faster than a conventional processor.
A team of Argentinian astronomers, peering up in the night's sky from the Astronomical Observatory of Córdoba has found a new, young lithium-rich giant star that they designated KIC 9821622. And they can't explain where that lithium comes from.
The full extent of Japan's 2011 Fukushima meltdown is still being uncovered, with measured levels of contamination increasing in previously identified sites throughout the North American coast. While it's still too low to threaten human or ocean life, this confirms that the power plant continues to leak radioactive isotopes researchers report.
All of the current Republican presidential candidates make a point of denying what scientists and the common folk have come to agree upon in much of the world, and of preserving the status quo in the energy sector. Why are these public figures, with aspirations of world leaders, basing so much of their policy on a fossil fuel-centric agenda that will only come back to bite us? In a revelation that shouldn't shock anyone who's even remotely aware of the concept of money, it's because they're being paid off.
The smallest member of the Raspberry Pi might actually be its largest: at the absurd price of £4 ($5 in the United States), it’s a full scale computer, and it could revolutionize electronic appliances. Wait, what’s a Raspberry Pi? The Raspberry Pi is a series of credit card–sized single-board computers developed in the United Kingdom by […]
Researchers at Tufts alter the laws of robotics to teach robots to say "no".
Imagine a nugget of real, 20 carat gold floating merrily on the milk foam of your cup of warm cappuccino -- scientists from ETH Zurich have found a way to do it. It's not super-cappuccino, or diamond-strong foam -- scientists led by Raffaele Mezzenga, Professor of Food and Soft Materials at ETH have produced a novel foam of gold, a three-dimensional material that is actually mostly...empty.
The ‘Most Used Words’ app has picked up steam more and more on our Facebook feeds, but as it’s often the case, this rings some major privacy alerts. So far, more than 17 million people have used the app to find out what they say most – but the recent uproar has begun when people […]
Agriculture is a big driver of climate change, with the meat industry standing out among the rest as a source of CO2 emissions and environmental damage; lowering demand for meat or ensuring that farms have as little environmental impact is possible, but costly. Would you be willing to eat less, if it was for the good of the planet? Pay more for your meat? A new study suggests that the idea isn't as controversial as you may believe on first glance.
Google’s Rachel Potvin took the stage @scale and hinted on just how many lines of code Google uses: a staggering 2 billion.
An University of Queensland study of mantis shrimp discovered a new form of light communication employed by the animals, the findings having potential applications in satellite remote sensing, biomedical imaging, cancer detection, and computer data storage.
Also known as the water bear, the tardigrade has a lot to be proud of -- this tiny organism is nigh-indestructible, known to have survived in extreme temperatures ( -272C to +151C / -457.6F to 303.8F) and to be the only animal that can brave the vacuum of space unprotected and live to tell the tale.
There’s a good chance that what you know about Crime Scene Investigation comes from movie – but there are actually quite many differences between the two. Many of the things you see in the series are not done at all in real life, and sometimes, real life science goes one step ahead of the movies. […]
While wind and solar are offering more energy than ever to global grids, there is still much work to be done if we want to properly integrate them; one question that always arise is that of energy storage. Sure, you can harvest a lot of sun during the day, but you need to store it for later usage, and that's quite a problem. Now, a Canadian start-up believe they may have found a solution for that, and it's just crazy enough to work: underwater balloons.
According to a new study from the Stanford University School of Medicine, human cellular development appears to depend on the actions of genetic material left over from ancient viral infections.
When is a rose not a rose? When it’s a transistorized electronic circuit, of course. Scientists at Sweden’s Linköping University have implanted a rose with conductive polymers and arranged the resulting circuitry into a real transistor system – complete with a digital switch. Here’s how materials scientist Magnus Berggren turned a rose into a piece […]
If you ever wanted to become a firefighter in an exotic location, now you have the perfect extra motivation: jetpacks. As if Dubai didn’t have enough hi-tech with all the awesome cars and helicopters and all, firefighters will receive jetpacks as part of the new year’s city budget – this is considered a “practical” solution […]
With robots taking up all the factory jobs and CEO's outsourcing each and any position they can to China, it's harder and harder for the common bloke to find a job these days. And it's only about to get worse as pigeons are now poised to take over the health industry positions for the price of bread crumbs.
Biologists have recently identified a new species of harvestman (daddy longlegs spider) near the town of Monjolos in Minas Gerais, southern Brazil, and gave the precious new discovery an accurate but tongue in cheek name: Iandumoema smeagol
A study of 986 Bolivian women found that on average, a lifetime infection with a type of roundworm named Ascarius lumbricoides led to an extra two children in the family. Their paper, published in the journal Science, suggests that the worm is altering the host's immune system, making it easier to become pregnant -- in effect, the parasite increases female fertility. The researchers hope this discovery will lead to "novel fertility enhancing drugs."
When Tumbles was born in Ohio with just two back legs, prospects didn’t seem that good for him, in a world where having just two legs is sadly, as good as a life sentence for most animals. Friends of the Shelter Dogs in Athens rescued and bottle-fed him, and not long after that, a family adopted […]
Every once in a while, someone creates something so incredible that it probably wouldn't even pass the Hollywood standard, being deemed to unrealistic.
Start-up company Deepfield Robotics has developed a field vehicle that can distinguish weeds from useful crops and eliminate them.
A University of Nevada team, led by anthropologist Peter Gray, tested several hypotheses about pets and contemporary courtship or dating rituals. Their study will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal Anthrozoös.
We all know that men like to impress the fairer members of our species, and this permeates into almost everything we do: we want to drive the shiniest car on the block, crack the funniest jokes 24/7 and write for ZMEScience so we can impress the ladies at parties. In essence, no matter how unlikely it is to actually impress, if a man has a choice between doing something and doing that something over the top so he can show off to women, you can bet your right arm he's gonna do the latter.
Ever wondered how Google Maps can predict traffic jams?
